A Winding Wave of Magic

1. An Inauspicious Beginning

1

AN INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING

“Everyone is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt is a visionary without scratching.”

— W.B. YEATS, FAIRY AND FOLK TALES OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY

I awoke to the heady scents of juniper, sage, and sweat.

Remnants of the dream hung over my bedroom like a canopy. Though winter morning light pushed sleepily through the condensation on my window looking over Cleveland Circle at the westernmost edge of Boston, shadows still seemed to threaten from the corners of the room.

Threats from some other time, past or future. Most often, the present.

Threats that I, Cassandra Whelan, PhD candidate in Irish and Celtic Studies, overworked grad student, and somewhat misanthropic witch, had to fight on a daily basis.

Sleep was supposed to be my reprieve from that battle, but last night, the universe had other ideas.

Like any good witch, I reached for the black journal on my nightstand and scribbled down what I could remember. I’d call Gran later to go over the dream. A seer like me—that is, a clairvoyant fae in a world that also included sorcerers, shifters, and sirens—she still lived in the house where she’d raised me on the Oregon coast, at the mist-covered foot of Neahkahnie Mountain. The only teacher I’d ever had in the magical arts, Gran would undoubtedly be able to offer guidance, along with yet another nagging reminder to come home to finish my real education before it was too late.

Not yet, I say, as I always did.

I still had four more months to finish my degree.

Four months until I could take up the assistant professorship waiting for me at a rural Oregon college just an hour from Gran’s house and the ocean that still beckoned my soul.

Four months until freedom from this city heaving under the weight of its memories, which often invaded my thoughts with a single touch.

But I had to get through today first.

I rolled over to check my alarm. Oh, goddess, no . It couldn’t be. “ Shit. ”

I jumped out of bed, grabbed one of the few skirts I owned out of my closet and tugged it on, followed by a thick pair of tights and wool kid gloves I kept for special occasions.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I chanted as I ran down the hall to splash water on my face and brush my teeth in the tiny prewar bathroom. When I made it to the kitchenette to hunt for a portable breakfast, I looked at my phone again. 9:10. Oh, hell.

My roommate, a twenty-three-year-old master’s student named Aja, groaned from the old corduroy couch that took up the lion’s share of our small common room. “Cassandra. It’s Saturday. Why are you running around shrieking like a banshee?”

I winced at the casual use of the term. Aja was an Irish Studies student like me; she knew very well that the stereotype of the shrieking banshee originated from the Irish bean sídhe, the walking woman who heralded death. As a plain person, however, Aja wouldn’t know that the mythological figure was rooted in very real types of mind witches. Seers, like me.

Like my people.

Or what little I’d ever known of them.

“The mini-seminar today with Rachel Cardy.” I stuffed a banana into my pocket and slathered some peanut butter onto a piece of stale bread. “You know, she just did that new translation of Lebor Gabála érenn . The department is trying to convince her to come here from Yale, and Professor James put me in charge of the whole event. I’m supposed to be there to welcome her at nine-thirty.”

“Oof. Good luck. Isn’t James your dissertation chair?”

“The one and the same.”

It was all I had to say. Horace James was a brilliant scholar of Irish mythology, head of my committee, and the man who essentially held my future in his gnarled hands.

He had also refused to approve my dissertation for defense on four separate occasions this year, and I was running out of time. Agreeing to organize and emcee a crowded event that would likely be standing room only—otherwise known to me as hell on earth—was my last-ditch effort to curry the old curmudgeon’s favor enough to get his rubber stamp of approval on the final chapter.

And thanks to that horrible dream, I was late.

Aja made a face as she sat up, almost like she was the mind reader in this apartment, not me. One side of her bobbed blonde curls was flattened to her cheek while the other was bunched up by her ear.

“Long night?” I tucked a notebook into my messenger bag along with a granola bar, ignoring the whiffs of beer and fleeting memories that tingled, even through my gloves, from Aja’s jacket.

“You could say that. Wait. I was going to tell you something, but you’d already gone to your room when I got in last night.”

I didn’t reply. I had one rule for roommates: once my door was closed, I was done for the night. Usually, that was before eight p.m., after a bath and the saining I did to cleanse the apartment of the memories that had been clinging to its corners and surfaces since it was built sometime in the early eighteen-nineties. The smoke of juniper, sage, and rowan couldn’t get rid of its history completely. Nothing could. But along with the Old Irish spell Gran had taught me when I was thirteen, it was enough to help me sleep.

Although last night, maybe I’d slept a little too deeply. I’d have to take it easy with the rowan next time.

“Anyway, the weirdest thing happened,” Aja continued, oblivious to the fact that I was more focused on scarfing my toast than listening to her story. “Nick and I were at the show. The band was going off, and everyone was dancing like crazy. Gorgeous neo-soul, tribal-music-type stuff. You should come out with us sometime, Cass. If you can ever get over your fear of crowds, that is. Therapy does wonders.”

“Uh-huh.” Unlikely. Therapy and getting over my fear/pathological hatred of crowds. I twisted around the kitchen in search of my scarf and boots. “So, what was weird, then?”

Aja rubbed a bloodshot eye, smudging some leftover makeup under it. “Well, when Nick went to grab us some drinks, this guy tried to chat me up. At first, it was your pretty average pick-up kind of thing. You know, ‘good band, huh?’ He was pretty hot and had this posh British accent, but I was there with someone else, so I just brushed him off. I thought he got the idea.”

I made a motion like I was winding a tape as I located my scarf by the hearth. “Little faster here, Aj.”

“Okay, but then he started asking me other questions. Like, what did I study, where did I live, stuff that started to get a little too personal. I said the Irish modernists and the rest was none of his business. Then he wondered if I was at BC too, and did I know you, and when I turned to ask him what his deal was, I swear, it was like the whole room froze for two or three seconds.”

I looked up from where I was tugging on my boots by the door. Suddenly, it felt like ice had been poured down the back of my shirt. “What do you mean, the whole room froze?”

Aja shrugged. “Like, the band stopped playing, and the people stopped dancing, and I swear to God, Cass, I thought half the crowd was watching to see what I would say. Then everyone started dancing again. I looked at the guy to tell him off, but he was gone.” She flopped back onto the couch. “I don’t know…maybe I imagined the whole thing. Nick and I did have mushroom tea before we went.”

By this point, I was tugging on my parka, trying to pretend I wasn’t spooked. Aja wasn’t fae, but they had obviously surrounded her last night. That in and of itself wasn’t a surprise, since she frequented events that attracted a lot of fae creatures. Not seers like me. There weren’t many of us to begin with, and I assumed everyone was like me and generally avoided crowds like the plague. Shifters and sirens, though, loved a good party.

Still, why a strange fae would be looking for me was the real mystery. Almost as mysterious as the ability to freeze an entire crowd for any amount of time—something I had never heard of anyone doing. We weren’t supposed to call attention to ourselves. Discovery meant death. Even I, as estranged as I was from the fae community, knew that.

“Cass?”

“Hmm?” I shook myself out of my thoughts.

“I said, who do you think it was?”

I paused, then crossed the room to do something unusual: remove my glove to touch my roommate. A pat on the shoulder would seem comforting to her, but as she thought about it, I might be able to See the episode as it happened last night. It was always a risk—my clairvoyance was unpredictable at best. Some days I could See people’s thoughts like orderly lines on a ticker tape or their memories like scenes in a movie. Other days were particularly bad. All manner of thoughts and emotions, spanning centuries descended just from bumping into a particularly popular lamp post.

I was really tired of Boston.

I prayed today would be a good day as my hand made contact. So far, the apartment had kept reasonably quiet this morning, so maybe my touch would cooperate.

A picture opened up in my mind’s eye—Aja was trying to remember what she’d seen. Her memory, however, wasn’t very clear. The dark lighting of the club obscured the man’s face along with the other people she had mentioned. She was trying to see beyond her boyfriend’s attempts to kiss her, and there wasn’t much more she could glean beyond that, even when the room froze behind him. Her confusion colored the rest like a toddler’s scrawl of crayon on a white wall.

I pulled my hand back before the vision grew more chaotic, as I knew it would if I pressed my luck. “It was probably just an old student or something. You need to stop drinking the stuff Nick makes you.”

Aja nodded and yawned. “You’re probably right. Um, Cass?”

I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder and went for the door. “What’s up?”

“Are you going to leave your hair like that?”

I turned to check my reflection in the mirror next to the front door. My face looked fine if still marked with a few creases from my pillow. Pale white skin and bright blue eyes looked back at me. A little too piercing, as always, with darker circles than normal underneath. My nose, overly long and sharp, pinked at the end to match my lips, which were just a little too red. Everything was just a little too much—the physical hallmark of being fae.

My hair, though, was a different story: an unruly black mantle with a mind of its own that was entirely too witchy for my taste. I had cut it off several times, but it always grew back at an alarming rate until reaching its preferred length of just below my shoulder blades. Today, it also suffered from the turmoil of my dreams, with some of the shorter waves bent awkwardly from behind my ears like the winding headdress of a bighorn sheep.

So much for finger-combing it into submission. What I wouldn’t give to be a sorceress right about now and be able to change my whole appearance with a brief spell.

“I see your point.” I hurriedly tamed the mass into a thick braided tail down my back. Still witchy, but at least it was neat—er. “That’ll have to do.”

Aja pointed to the ground. “You forgot your glove?—”

“Don’t touch that!” I sprang across the room and fairly pounced on the offending article, which was lying innocently on the table behind the couch.

My roommate sat up again and tucked her chin over her knees. “Sorry. I forgot. No touching your things, right?”

I felt a bit sheepish myself as I pulled on the last of my protection. “No, I’m sorry. I know I’m a touchy pain in the ass.”

“You’re quirky. There’s a difference. Plus you always make me tea in the morning, and you leave the best leftovers in the fridge. That mac and cheese last week. Holy cow.”

I smiled, wishing I could give her a real hug. Wishing something so simple wouldn’t ruin my entire day. And hers.

“Don’t you have to go?”

I started. “Yes. I do.”

“Good luck!”

But I didn’t answer. I was already sprinting out the door.